BRADLEY, FROM BAGGS 
His Prowess as a Partridge-Hunter 
BY EDWARD CAVE 
HEN I walked into the 
}little sporting goods 
=} store in Llewellyn, John 
Bradley was a stranger 
| to me; five minutes 
later he was the best 
friend I had in the 
ea State of New Jersey. 
I had eo the streets of the Self- 
sufficient City many a day, subconsciously 
searching the throngs of passersby for an 
American face, and when at rare intervals 
I saw one, I would stop to gaze after the 
stranger, an impulse to hurry along and 
accost him tugging at my heart. I had each 
morning boarded my train with the smug 
suburbanites, had raced with them for the 
ferry-boat, and in the evening reversed the 
proceeding. The few that I had scraped 
an acquaintance with talked mostly of golf 
and of automobiling; and when I did come 
to know here and there a shooter, they 
talked of clay bird-shooting, or of black 
duck-shooting at Barnegat. No doubt I 
should have by and by become as one of 
them had I not been referred to Bradley 
as a fellow who had shot in the West. 
And, as [have said, Bradley was soon my 
friend. How could I resist him, when he 
looked at me across the show-case with that 
same what-the-devil-shall-I-do-next expres- 
sion in his roguish blue eyes that a fox- 
terrier I once had used to have? He stood 
about five feet six and appeared to be 
twenty-five or twenty-six years old; his 
complexion, under the sunburn, was what 
-might have been called ruddy; he had a 
clean-shaven, square jaw, a rather insignifi- 
cant nose, with a bit of a tilt toit; a wide 
mouth that had a pleasant upward curl at 
the corners, and his hair was a true sorrel. 
He wore a white sombrero of a size and 
shape affected by the more conservative 
ranch hands of the Northwest—just the 
sort of hat you would pay eight dollars for 

in Miles City; and his legs I could not see 
because of the counter. So I opened up on 
him. 
“Did you ever hear tell of Livereating 
Johnson ?” 
“T did,” came the answer, quick and 
sharp, in a voice of more volume than I had 
expected from the little man across the 
counter. 
‘“What did he do to the boys in his town 
when they didn’t behave, when he was the 
deputy sheriff ?”’ ' 
“Knocked h 1 out of ’em!” 
““Where’d you learn that?” 
“Wyoming. Say w” 
“How many counties in Wyoming?” 
“Thirteen above zero. What’s yore 
name?” 
‘“‘Come out here where I can get a look 
at your legs; maybe I won’t like them.” 
“You'll have to come around the first 
of the month, stranger; I ain’t got enough 
to pay the help.” 
‘Let me see your legs.” 
“What for ?”? with some asperity. 
“T want to see if you can walk. I’ve 
known cow men that couldn’t.” 
“Ohh 1!” he exclaimed, striding 
forth. ‘‘Mine was sheep. I come from 
Baggs, Wyoming. Walk! What for?” and 
he looked down complacently upon a 
pair of spindly shanks with the true broncho 
bend in them. 
‘““‘P—Patience, my dear young sir,” 
said I, almost letting the cat out of the bag 
before 1 thought. ‘Have patience and listen 
attentively. Can you shoot?” 
t. “Can I shoot ? Can I ——. Say, stranger, — 
what’s the difference between you and a 
ladybug? I'll tell you—a ladybug knows 
enough to go in out of the w” 
‘All right; you can walk and you can 
shoot, and you savvy the big lonesome. 
You got a good dog?” 
«Say, you come around to-night at eight 




